On March 4, 1885, Dirty Dan Harris -- founder of Fairhaven -- and a bunch of his drunken, rowdy pals raised one of the biggest and highest flags seen in the Northwest up to that time. Planted in front of the Fairhaven Hotel, the flagpole was so tall -- 110 feet -- that it had to be made in two sections. It took the boozy bannermen most of a day to hoist the 50-pound flag aloft, after which they toasted themselves with a round of congratulatory drinks.

Just shy of a century later, this brief act of erectile dysfunction was a distant memory when Seattle's Columbia Center became the tallest structure in Washington when it opened on March 2, 1985. Topping out at a whopping 997 feet, the new skyscraper's dominating presence on the Seattle skyline led to a 1989 voters' initiative to establish growth limits in downtown Seattle. It passed, but new zoning laws have effectively repealed the cap on heights, and no building has risen higher than Columbia Center …
yet. (Image courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives)

Seattle's first steel-framed skyscraper was the 14-story Alaska Building, built in 1903. In 1910 work began on the Smith Tower, which opened in 1914. The pyramid-capped edifice was twice as tall as the King Street Station's clock tower, the city's erstwhile tallest structure. For almost 50 years the Smith Tower was claimed by many to be the "tallest building west of the Mississippi," even though in 1931 a Kansas City skyscraper topped it by 19 feet.

Seattle's skyline remained relatively unchanged until the opening of the Space Needle for the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. Even though it stood north of downtown, the space-age structure immediately became the recognized symbol for Seattle, so much so that when the Seattle First National Bank Building claimed the crown as the city's tallest structure in 1969, it was often referred to as "the box the Space Needle came in." Since then, Seattle's skyline has changed dramatically, and these days the South Lake Union neighborhood has become home to the newest wave of tall buildings.

Starting Out

On March 2, 1853, President Millard Fillmore established Washington Territory, carving it out of Oregon Territory. When Oregon gained statehood in 1859, Washington Territory was expanded to include all of present-day Idaho and parts of Montana and Wyoming. President Lincoln severed these in 1863, creating Idaho Territory and establishing Washington's current boundaries, and residents began to campaign for admission to the union. Some argued that it made the most sense to divide the territory into two states along the crest of the Cascades (an idea that never quite dies), but Washington ultimately joined the union in one piece in 1889.

When the new Territorial Legislature convened its first session on February 28, 1854, Seattle pioneer Arthur Denny proposed a constitutional amendment to give women settlers (but not the Indian wives of settlers) the right to vote. The motion, which would have made Washington the first U.S. jurisdiction to enfranchise women, failed by a single vote, but set the stage for a war between the sexes that would rage for more than half a century to come.

Horrific Descent: Shortly after midnight on March 1, 1910, a peal of thunder dislodged a snow shelf directly above two stalled trains near Wellington, not far from Stevens Pass. Millions of tons of snow and ice swept locomotives, carriages, and 96 lives down the mountainside, making this the largest avalanche disaster in United States history.

Go With the Flow: On February 29, 1948, Captain Alexander Peabody halted his vessels after state officials refused to grant his request for a 30-percent fare increase on his privately owned Black Ball ferry line. Residents of Vashon Island, who had dealt with a similar crisis one year earlier, began running their own ferries the very next day.

HistoryLink.org is the first online encyclopedia
of local and state history created expressly for the Internet.
(SM)
HistoryLink.org is a free public and educational resource produced
by History Ink, a 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt corporation.
Contact us by phone at 206.447.8140, by mail at Historylink, 1411 4th Ave. Suite 803, Seattle WA 98101 or email admin@historylink.org